U.S. Congressman Tom Lantos gestures during a press conference in Beijing, China, Tuesday, Jan. 11, 2005. Lantos, the ranking Democrat on the House International Relations Committee, returned from a three-day visit to Pyongyang where he discussed the North's nuclear program and human rights issues with high-ranking North Korean officials. (AP Photos/Ng Han Guan) Ran on: 01-12-2005
Rep. Tom Lantos spent three days in North Korea. Ran on: 01-16-2005 Ran on: 01-22-2005
Rep. Tom Lantos, D-San Mateo, the only Holocaust survivor to serve in Congress, says the lessons of that era are relevant today. Ran on: 01-22-2005
Rep. Tom Lantos, D-San Mateo, the only Holocaust survivor to serve in Congress, says the lessons of that era are relevant today.

Photo: NG HAN GUAN

U.S. Congressman Tom Lantos gestures during a press conference in...

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FRIMOVIES5/C/02MAR99/DD/HO--THE LAST DAYS U.S. REPRESENTATIBE TOM LANTOS, WITH HIS WIFE ANNETT, WAS 16 WHEN THE NAZIS OCCUPIED HIS HOMELAND OF HUNGARY IN 1944. ALSO RAN: 07/ CAT

Photo: HO

FRIMOVIES5/C/02MAR99/DD/HO--THE LAST DAYS U.S. REPRESENTATIBE TOM...

Lantos to make painful Holocaust pilgrimage / Survivor to play key role at Auschwitz commemoration

2005-01-22 04:00:00 PDT Washington -- Next week will be an emotional one for San Mateo Democratic Rep. Tom Lantos, the only Holocaust survivor to serve in Congress.

The 76-year-old Lantos, who escaped from Nazi labor camps and served in the anti-Nazi underground in his native Hungary, will help represent the United States on Monday at a special United Nations General Assembly session to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the liberation of all the Nazi death camps.

He and his wife, Annette, who also lived through the Holocaust -- which consumed most of Hungary's 600,000 Jews in just a few short months in 1944 -- will fly to Poland on Tuesday. They will be part of the official U.S. delegation to mark the day -- Jan. 27, 1945 -- when forces of the Soviet 60th Army of the First Ukrainian Front liberated the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp.

Most of the close relatives of Lantos and his wife were among the estimated 1 million Jews, 150,000 non-Jewish Poles, 23,000 Gypsies, 15,000 Soviet prisoners of war and 10,000 war prisoners of other nationalities who died at Auschwitz in its gas chambers or from starvation and disease.

The congressman has been to Auschwitz, now a museum, several times since the war. But asked how he felt about returning as part of an official delegation expected to be headed by Vice President Dick Cheney, he paused and remembered the pain of his teenage years.

"That's not an easy question to answer. Going there brings back incredible anguish, but it will give Annette and me another opportunity to pay homage to our families and to rededicate ourselves to the cause of human rights all across the globe," said Lantos, the founder of the House's Human Rights Caucus who is beginning his 13th term in Congress.

Remembering the Nazi Holocaust that killed 6 million European Jews is much more than a historical exercise, said Lantos, pointing to the humanitarian crisis in the Darfur region of western Sudan as the latest example of lessons unlearned. About 1.7 million people have been made homeless in one of the world's poorest areas, and another 71,000 have been killed in fighting between the Sudanese government and rebels.

"There are continued large-scale, appalling genocidal occurrences going on, and it's important to remember that they are occurring," he added.

The U.N. session, scheduled for three hours Monday, almost didn't occur. For the 191-nation General Assembly to hold a special session, at least half of the member states have to join in a request. It took personal lobbying from Lantos, who went to New York to meet with Secretary-General Kofi Annan, and from Nobel Peace Prize-winner Elie Wiesel, who lived through Auschwitz and other concentration camps, to persuade enough governments to sign on.

Annan announced Jan. 11 that the session would be held, reinforced his call for "vigilance against anti-Semitism" and stressed that the genocide against the Jews must never be repeated against other groups.

It isn't known how many Arab states, most of which refuse to recognize Israel, will send representatives to Monday's session, which was requested by the United States, the European Union and several individual European nations. Lantos said he hopes every nation attends.

The Lantoses' story of living through the Holocaust is one of luck and pluck.

Hungary had sided with Nazi Germany in World War II, but until 1944 its Jews were untouched. But the Germans occupied the country in 1944 as the Red Army approached from the east, and the Nazis began to deport Hungary's large Jewish population as part of the "final solution." The future congressman was sent to a labor camp outside Budapest, from which he escaped but was captured and severely beaten.

He escaped again and this time returned to Budapest. He found a haven with an aunt who lived in a building in the city's Jewish ghetto where residents were protected by Raoul Wallenberg, the millionaire Swedish diplomat who confounded the Nazis' plans by issuing protective passes to tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews.

The teenage Lantos, who because of his blond hair and blue eyes could pass as an "Aryan," served as an underground courier. In January 1945, Soviet troops occupied the city. Most of his family was gone, shipped to Auschwitz for death.

Annette Lantos, who had been a childhood friend of her future husband, had been a bit more fortunate. She and her mother had fled when the Germans took Hungary and went into hiding until they could get to Switzerland using fake documents.

When she returned to Hungary, she found that her father, grandparents and almost all her other relatives had perished.

The Lantoses were reunited after the war and were married in Los Angeles in 1950.

Lantos never met Wallenberg, who disappeared into Soviet custody in 1945, but he repaid the debt of his survival in his first House term by shepherding through to passage in 1981 legislation making Wallenberg an honorary U.S. citizen.

And to show how small a world it is, Annan's wife is Wallenberg's niece. Her mother is one of Annette Lantos' best friends.